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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MARTIN SCHUTZE 




Boston : Richard G. Badger 

1904 



Copyright 1904 by Martin Schutze 
All Rights Reserved 



LIBRARY of CONaSESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 27 1904 

Oopyrij^iit entry 
aiASS <^ XXc. No; * 
COPY 



LJ 






Printed at 
The Gorham Press 
Bosto7i, U. S. A, 



To E. W. S. 



c 


ontents 








I. Crux Aetatis 7 


II. Aetas et Aeternitas. Five Sonnets 


8 


" Through the Sober Window " 


13 


Isolde. Three Sonnets 




14 


Monochord .... 






17 


''Again Your Eye" 






18 


Silver-Gray 






20 


Interface . 








22 


The Three Moons 








23 


1. Faerie . 








23 


2. Aspiration 








24 


3. Echoes . 








26 


Autumn Gypsy 








27 


The Double . 








32 


Gloom Folk . 








33 


Winter Sabbath 








34 


By the Great Lake in 


I Winter 






35 


Continuity 








36 


Threescore Ten 








37 


Evening . 








38 


The Gale 








40 


Day-After-Day 








42 


In October Woods 








43 


The Singer 








44 


Song 








45 


Vibrations 








46 


Christmas Eve . 








48 



Fall Exuberance .... 


49 


Vapors ...... 


60 


The Tree 


51 


The Turn of the Wheel . 


52 


*' I Saw a Russian Thistle Ball " 


53 


" Precious Stones I Found by the Sea *' 


54 



I Crux Aetatis 

I had a vision of a smouldering plain, 

A thousand blackened stacks were belching wide 

A twisting coil of smoke on every side 

Which crawled along the murky sky. The bane 

Of black death seemed to have falPn. I looked 

again, 
And many blackened roofs I dimly spied. 
Deep-sunken in the smoke, they seemed to hide 
Charred heaps of recent ruins which remain 
Of towns, by pillage, murder, war laid low. 
And ever through the smoke a shadow ran : 
A cross, and on it hung the form of Man. 
Clamors confused and strident surged below ; 
And as they blending rose they were the cry 
Of murder : " Crucify Him, crucify !" 



II Aetas et Aeternitas 



Think you that cunning, violence, and crime 

Can ever be of Love and Truth the seed ? 

Think you, the wells of hate and w^rath which 

feed 
Your being, through some alchemy of time 
Will turn to sweetness in your fruit? The chime 
Of Peace will issue from your voices keyed 
To cries of war? Can snow again be freed 
From the deep scars of traffic and its grime? 

You point to the success and worldly show 
Your iron hand has wrought, and call it wise 
Because to-morrow's hand can grasp it. Lo, 
With all their pomp, a thousand morrows pass, 
And still abideth Truth, as bodes the face 
Of night beneath the scrawls of fire-flies. 



II Aetas et Aeternitas 



Does not the bolt that smiteth down the tree 
Consume the countless grasses which are grown 
Around its root? And do the grasses moan 
In bitterness of spirit : '' What are we 
To share the doom thy pride has brought on thee ?" 
The remnant servants of the Great o'erthrown 
Possess their ruins. Do the masters groan : 
' ' Why profit ye by our adversity ? " 

Why wage ye, brothers, internecine strife? 
Rule ye the storm that tramples down the grain, 
And fells the tree? Does not the April rain 
Melt down the sides of mountains, taking life, 
And giving it? Why clamor ye and call 
Your brother's guilt what is the law of all ? 



II Aetas et Aeternitas 



. . . For all the speech of Evil is but one. 
Whether it leap abrupt from brazen tongue 
Of open violence, or tarry long 
With blandishments of cunning, or it run 
In the smooth cadence by long practice won, 
Or meekly drifting w^ith the guilty throng ; 
Whether it issue from one leader strong, 
Or from a thousand led ; it is but one. 

Its theme be glory, or prosperity, 

The love of country, v^isdom, or the love 

Of man, and of the God that is above — 

But from the threshold of Eternity 

A voice of thunder echoes back the cry 

Of murder : '* Crucify Him, crucify !" 



10 



II Aetas et Aeternitas 



And all the speech of Goodness is but one. 
Whether it come as at the mist-veiled dawn 
All timid to the water comes the fawn ; 
Whether it triumph as the Autumn sun 
Over the increase of rich labor done ; 
Whether it speak as on a summer morn 
The night in countless little gleams dew-borne 
Speaks to the toiling day ; it is but one. 

It is a song of gladness and of faith, 
Of brotherhood, of steadfast gentleness, 
And love that never chideth but to bless, 
Nor quakes at cunning, tyranny, nor death ; 
And from the throne of God comes back the cry 
Of blessing: *' Sanctify Him, sanctify!" 



11 



II Aetas et Aeternitas 



Night lies on field and woodland as a dream 

Of peace and love, so solemn and so still, 

When climbs the grade a freight train with the 

shrill 
Voice of some monstrous agony. The steam 
Is bursting from a hundred pores. The scream 
Of all the bitter travail of the will. 
The belching smoke, the crash of steel on steel, 
For one brief space of turmoil rule supreme. 

And like some spray upflung against the face 
Of the new-risen moon, without a trace. 
It swiftly vanishes. And closer draw 
Again the presences of Earth, and Sky 
With all its stars, clothed with the authority 
Of the supreme unalterable law. 



12 



Through the Sober Window 

Through the sober window 

The wooded Autumn hillside peers, 

Silent in the silver-purple rain-mist, 

Dim as golden treasures 

That have slept a thousand years 

In the deepest depths of the sea. 

And a moment we wonder 

And breathless gaze 

At the buried golden treasures 

That have slumbered in dim sea-depths 

A thousand years, 

Strange as the many-figured curtain 

Which folds the ultimate secret of things. 

And we turn again 

To our cabined ease. 

We ripen, and fall, and turn to mould 

As the fluttering leaf. 

We pass as the blind gray clouds overhead. 

And within us, unheeded, 
A golden treasure slumbers a thousand years, 
Dim as the deepest depths of the sea, 
Somber with the secret of things. 



13 



Isolde 



Isolde — is not this the voice that I 

Have caught at through the vain imprisoned 

years ? 
Have I not heard it as a dreamer hears 
Whispers astir within a mystery 
Ambiguous w^ith stubborn gloom and high 
Timid desires ? Have I not bent my ears 
To it through the rout of wont-begotten fears, 
And it flashed by me like a wind-sped cry? 

What seemed the enduring confines of desire, 
Age after prudent age amassing strove, 
Like chaff are gone within a breath of fire ; 
And the majestic shape of ancient Right, 
A piteous phantom of a troubled night 
Has waned before the morning song of Love. 



14 



Isolde 

II 

Thy voice that came upon the sweeping sea 

Of passion-driven sound, as sea-birds dance 

Above the leaping crests, now vaults the expanse 

Of long-waved passions of Humanity — 

The wandering tides of human destiny. 

And all the jar and war of words which spans 

The world, an iron roof of dissonance. 

Melts into this one voice's harmony. 

What raged, a brutish tumult of the cries 
Of lust, clamor of greed and fervor, sighs 
Of aspiration, and the blasts of hate, 
Sounds but the broken vowels of one word. 
Falters the fragments of one timeless chord, 
Love perfect in thy voice transfigurate. 



15 



Isolde 

III 

Truth I beheld, a shimmering island, dim 
Within a streaming, hazy veil of sense. 
Where all the solemn idols of pretense, 
The frowning spectres of historic whim, 
Creatures of rote-begotten wisdom, grim 
Judges of guilt and makeshift recompense. 
Are but cloud-phantoms on the horizon whence 
They mutter, gloom, sink 'neath the violet rim — 

Where life is as the blowing of the flowers, 
A fervent dream ; a rapture 'neath the wing 
Of the white moth of passion, quivering. 
Through purple-eyed desirous twilight hours ; 
And then — a fragrance passing in the streams 
Of mingling Summer-dreams, Midsummer- 
dreams . . . 



16 



Monochord 

When Love 

Unsparing, unreserving Love 

Meets face to face, 

Then, and then only, is the veil w^ithdraw^n 

That shieldeth soul from soul. 

That shields the soul from God. 

For terrible, 

Unspeakable, devouring is the soul. 

If so its eye 

Be not the brimming eye of prostrate love ; 

For quailing, utterly undone the soul 

If so its eye 

Be not the eye of unremitting love : 

Unsparing is the countenance of God. 

Close-drawn the veil. 

We walk in darkness and in solitude. 

Husband and wife, child, brother, market-fellow. 

Ah, will not Love 

Cease faintly fingering at the corners, 

And with delivering resolute hand 

Fling wide the veil 

That shroudeth soul from soul, 

That shrouds the soul from God. 



17 



Again Your Eye 

Again your eye 

So steady, and so gentle, and so firm, 

Rests on me, and again 

That even quest. 

That even self-transcending search. 

Sounds the deep w^aters of my troubled soul. 

And then again I know 
The weakness and despair of the First Man 
When first he looked into his Maker's eye, 
When first he faced the question of the Truth, 
When first he quailed, and failed, and hid. 

And I am exiled then as you. 

And straying in the wastes of solitude 

As you. 

I call on all the powers of Love, 

Upon the deathless ardor of the Spirit, 

And nothing answers, save 

The tangled echoes of my anguished voice. 



18 



All the devices of my love, 

All my caresses, all the thoughts and words 

Of gentleness that struggle from my soul, 

My voiceless passion, all the deeds and dreams 

That spring from out the tumult of my striving, 

Are but thin vapors burnt to nought 

By fires transcendent ; 

Are but a mockery and make-believe 

That cannot turn the shafts sent true 

Into the core of being. 

For still within your eyes 

There abides unflinching, unescapable, 

That even quest, that silent, troubled search. 

As broods Eternity 

Behind the ceaseless, traceless shift of things. 



19 



Silver-Gray 

Slowly drift the silver hours, 
Shifts the silver sky. 

By a season-silvered house, 

On a bench, deep in the seeding sward, 

An old man and woman drowse. 

Round-backed as the haystacks in their yard, 

Silent as the hills ; 

Slow-eyed, calm, unindividual. 

Looking without w^onder on the meadows 

Rolling silvery by the low gray wall. 

Without question on the dizzy glimmer 

Of the misty sea of farthest hills. 

Trees and bushes float in silver glimmer. 

Shreds of vapory hillsides shimmer, 

Silver tapestry, 

Through a screen of pines. 

Shot with sprays of silver spines. 

Silently drift vast cloud shadows 

Over drowsy hills and woods and^meadows ; 

Glistening bulks, pass silently 

Browsing cattle down the shallow 

Gently dipping valley. 



20 



All their necks low-slanting as the hills, 
All their heads deep-buried in the grass, 
Slowly, evenly they pass. 

The sun-quickened atmospheric simmer. 

Insect-voiced, o'er all the grass-sweet ground, 

Rifts a moment for the sound 

Of the terse and measured cattle-cropping 

— Like sea-mist before the ripples dropping 

Burst on burst, unhurried on the shore — 

Or some wander-bird's fall-tempered measure, 

Gathering all the silvery shimmer 

In a few swift-flashing drops of sound — 

And again the tremulous whirr creeps o'er 

The slow-moving hours, 

As the silvery blur creeps over the sky. 

The old house, the meadows, and their creatures 
Melt with the vague, unsubstantial features 
Of the hills ; 

Overgloomed by a far mountain, brooding. 
Like a bovine giant-beast primeval 
Couching, in a gap between the hills. 

Slowly drift the silver hours, 
Shifts the silver sky. 



21 



Interface 

Through the Summer ball-room window 
Rolls the ancient tune of the sea ; 
Within, an old waltz is playing 
That waves and sways as the sea. 

Like a phantom tide, the sea-mist 
The heated fragrance drowns ; 
The swish of the sea steals into 
The ripples of frothy gowns. 

Round bushes, huddled and anxious, 
As they cling to the hem of the night, 
And trees, wind-worn and haggard. 
Press close to the circle of light. 

They seem forever approaching — 
They seem forever to fly — 
They seem forever pleading — 
They seem forever to spy — 

Through the light from within dew-filtered, 
Glimmers the starry sky, 
Far, and faint, mist-shrouded. 
As eyes of memory. 



22 



The Three Moons. A Dream 

1 FAERIE 

In the deep, round lap of a wood-warded vale, 

Lay a moon-white pool ; a flawless pearl it lay 

In yielding slopes soft with mist-bloom of the 
moonlight, 

And the woods were ancient palaces in the moon- 
light. 

Children with glimmering bodies came playmg to 
the pool. 

Flickering white flames; and diamond ripples 
came 

To play with them ; as tinkling silver bells they 
came . . . 

I, too, was with the ripples ; they were fondling 

and cool 
Like a mother's fingers ; and the breezes crooned 

a fairy tale 
As they stooped low to me from the forest's magic 

shade. 
Or fell on the water like swift swallows, to fade 

away 
In sudden elfin laughter. Dream-buoyed I lay 
Where in blissful whispers round me the ripples 
played . . . 



In dead desert ripples I found a memory 
Wan as the moon in the midday sky. 
23 



II. ASPIRATION 

In a daisied meadow circled by dark walls of 

wood, 
In the strength of my youth I stood, and flickering 

fire-flies 
Were as stings of passion to my blood. 
Far on over the meadow I saw slowly rise 
A figure tall as a white lily, and her face 
Was dim and tremulous as the moon in driven 

mist. 
Her hair as flights of swallows. A summons was 

her face. 
I was drawn as birds by the message that on misty 

wing 
From a distant April the breezes bring. . . 
Strong young breezes ran beside me in the race, 
And the daisies were as dancing ripples at my 

feet. . . . 



24 



The daisies were as upturned faces at my feet, 
With urging, winning gaze they tempted me to 

bide, 
They sank with rueful murmur under every pace, 
They surged, a pleading host that would not be 

denied. 
They clung in sinuous embraces to my feet, 
They grew till not in vain my throat and lips they 

kissed. 
They grew till over my eyes they were a billowing 

mist, 
And the breezes, screaming scourges in my 

face. . . . 



Impenetrable walls of poppies rose before 

My eyes. The breezes slept. I saw^the face no 



25 



III. ECHOES 

I won the wide summit of a wood-girt hill. 
Behind me stealthy leaves were falling silently, 
Yellow ripples upon Autumn's purple sea 
In whose twilight distant gorgeous forests swoon, 
Jewelled islands of dream. And over the edge of 

the hill 
From the pale purple sea had welled the yellow 

moon — 
Memory's golden heart, it hung quivering over the 
hill: 
And the children's play, the fairy croon. 
The beat of the pace at the start of the race, 
The shimmering pool that ebbed so soon. 
And the tremors upon a forgotten face — 
Came, vibrant echoes, from heights unattain- 
able. . . . 



26 



Autumn Gypsy 

I found her wandering over the hill 

One warm October day ; 
Her feet, sun-glints that swift and still, 

O'er waving grasses stray. 

A single wind-blown garment torn, 

Clung to her slender form, 
Gray, purple-shaded, season-worn 

By sun, and thorn, and storm. 

Her golden tresses were shot with fire 

As sun-lit maple trees ; 
And through them, eyes of deep desire — 

Blue sky through golden leaves. 

Her head was purple-aster crowned 

— Pale wreath of the Autumn dawn — 

Her eyes were shaded with twilight round, 
As the blue October morn. 

We roamed the jewelled morning through 
With the cloud-shadows over the downs ; 

At noon we lay where the sky hung blue, 
In thin, gold maple crowns. 



27 



Close as noon shadows, leaves were strown, 

Golden around each tree ; 
Ripe and gay, the leaves came down, 

Passionate souls set free. 

Her songs were as the rustling trees 

"* — Linked echoes of things half said ; — 
Her hands alive as the grass-sweet breeze 
That softly over us sped : 

This is the bridal of the Earth, 

These, her nuptial bowers. 
These are the days of passionate mirth. 

These, her golden showers. 

With seeds, and leaves, and the wander- 
ing sky, 

Her ministers are we. 
We ripen, beget, and bear, and die, 

Yet changeless are as she. 

Of the magic knowledge, these the days, 
Which youth eternal brings, 

When we see the vision of her face 

Through the rifting screen of things . . . 



28 



Where a brook foamed over a mossy ledge, 

Was a rocky, secret pool ; 
The trees were a vaulting, golden hedge. 

The water was clear and cool. 

And naked she rose, as a birch so fair, 

Poised on a froth-girt stone, 
A golden torrent, her rippling hair 

About her shoulders shone. 

Amid the falling foam she stood. 

In a living bridal veil ; 
And then the pool with ripples wooed 

Her body, pearly pale. 

Her laughter, and speech, and body's grace 
Were gleams that flickering sped 

Over twining roots, o'er the water's face, 
And its ripple-clouded bed . . . 

When twilight peered from every dell 

With purple-aster eyes. 
And the clouds had all gone over the hill. 

And the mists began to rise, 



A bed I made under balsam trees, 

On a needle-scented floor, 
Branches and crackling Autumn leaves 

For a fragrant fire I bore . . . 

The dome of Peace rose slowly and still 

Over forest-tiers on tiers. 
Over the sw^inging curve of the hill, 

Above the starry spheres . . . 

Glimmered her face in the dusk of her hair. 
When sleeping she lay by my side. 

As the slip of the midnight moon in a lair 
Lingers, of boughs spread v^ide. 

When I awoke in the chill gray dawn. 

Empty was her bed. 
Gold was the hill over which she had gone. 

With a last glimpse of her head. 

And I have wandered the whole world through, 

Seeking her everywhere, 
And ever above the hill in the blue 

Was a glimpse of her golden hair . . . 



30 



I have made a cabin of bark and boughs, 
On the slope of a terraced hill ; 

Below, in the hazy valley, drowse 
Towns, contented and still. 

The fire is lit on the woodland hearth, 

Under balsams by my door ; 
Again to her bridal comes the Earth 

With all her golden store. 

And there, just over the brow of the hill 

A golden gleam I see — 
Where the last light kisses, long and still, 

The crown of a maple tree. 



31 



The Double 

Whence is the stare, 

Frozen upon some iron countenance, 

Beyond the vacant stare 

Of shallow noonday's cloudless desolate glare? 

Whence the smile, 

Mirage of lands of ever-blowing flowers, 

Behind the potent smile 

On haze-bedizened shore, and sea, and isle? 

Whence the voice 

That cries against the heavens' resounding dome, 

Above the jar and noise 

Where men despair, and clamor, and rejoice ? 

Whence the hush, 

Yawning beneath the featureless abysm 

Of shame's and sorrow's hush 

That drains all impulse's animant rush? 

What is this thing. 
Forever present, ever vanishing. 
Now burning in the words a stranger says. 
Now quailing in a baffled girlish gaze. 
Now quick beneath yon boys' wild ways and plays, 
— And now entrenched behind its own soul's 
laboring ? 



32 



Gloom-Folk 

Their eyes, cold, gloom-lidded, 
As the narrow glance of twilight 
With the heavy lids of darkness 
On the ashen streak of horizon — 
Sightless, bleak, forgetting. 
As falling dusk in November. 

Gray flocks of fog, they pasture 
In the gray mist-bloom of the valleys 
Which the blighting hand of darkness 
Has turned to wasted fallows — 
Heartless, blank, forgetting. 
As falling dusk in November. 

Their hearts, waste as the fallows ; 

The mocking glimmer of twilight 

In blurring mists, their features ; 

Their breasts, fog-smothered hollows- 
Blurred, blank, forgetting, 
As falling dusk in November. 



33 



Winter Sabbath 

My soul has stolen out upon the hoar 
And glistening day. A hazy mystery, 
It veils the turquoise sky and answering sea, 
And ice-empearled and battlemented shore ; 
It lays a soft concealing mist-hand o'er 
The horizon's cruel prison wall where the 
Fatuous Vision, mad for liberty, 
With tremulous finger fumbles for a door. 

And all my world is a vast pearly gleam, 
And all my thought an iridescent dream ; 
The fairy headlands streaming through the mist, 
The sudden shadows where the breezes stray, 
The lapping water — drifting, shifting play 
Within my soul is all I wis and list. 



34 



By the Great Lake in Winter 

The drowsy hum and whine of the speeding train 

Is on the air ; a broken dizzy stream, 

Flits by the window the dense fleecy steam ; 

And with it, now concealed, revealed again, 

Along the shore a gray fantastic chain 

Of huddling shapes, frost-modelled hosts of dream. 

Bides, through the rifts, a vast gray passive gleam. 

And, purple-gray, the sky glooms o'er the main. 

Infinite Presence — there it seems to dwell 
Where all things passionate, inscrutable, 
Vast and still have left their featurings 
Beneath the scrawls of mocking episodes ; 
And, far beyond the madding whirl of things, 
Its face forever bides, and broods, and bodes. 



35 



Continuity 



Clear and sparkling, falls the water 

into the basin rock-gray, moss-green, 
Ever gliding, ever passing, 

ever fixed as the pale-blue sheen 
Sent from the blue heart of heaven 

which unaltered, unpassing bides 
Through the ebb and flow of seasons, 

through the ages' passionate tides. 

Every ripple, mingling swiftly 

with its hurrying fellows, flees 
Down the pebbled gleam-flecked channel, 

under the gloom of biding trees, 
Fleeting, vanishing, never perishing, 

changeless in ever changing state. 
Past things rooted, from secret to secret, 

down the varying channels of Fate. 

In dark-rippling robe a woman 

moveless stands by the rushing stream, 
With a girl-babe, fair and naked, 

on her bosom like a gleam 
Flashing from the breast of darkness ; 

both with wonder agaze in their faces — 
And the water flashes, passes, 

ever renewing, flashes, passes 



36 



Threescore-Ten 

Murmured blessings of falling snow be on you 
Whose undaunted heart, though it lock in silence 
Many a wound and forfeited quest of springtime, 
Purer than snow is. 

Benedictions of sunlit snow be on you, 
Flooded with the infinite blue of heaven, 
Though your soul's unclouded abyss of calmness 
Shames the unfathomed. 

Benedictions of waning snow be on you. 
Leave eternal splendor of Spring about you 
In whose eyes is mirrored the never fading 
Glory indwelling. 



37 



Evening 



We are sitting in clover-fields drowsy with bees, 

My sweetheart sees lines, and colors, and glints 

That sport with the solemn, paternal trees. 

And on tiering hills the sheeted sea tints. 

A wilful sky, in sunset carouse 

With frothy clouds, just pushes aside 

A curtain, gold-fringed, of his many-domed house 

On the western hills, for a last misty-eyed 

Survey of the smiling, indulgent slopes. 

And my thoughts follow the wayward trail 

Of the smoke of my pipe, as it winds and gropes 

Toward the heights where its cloud-brothers sail. 

O'er the dusk-bronzed meadow sways and groans 

The last load of hay, and the shouts of its crew 

I hear, and my sweetheart's musing tones, 

The robin's bubbling comments, too. 

And the far-off city's deep-voiced moans 

As the day-burden slips from brain and thew. 

Veil after veil, the night curtains fall. 
Blue on blue ; a wan, reminiscent light 
On watch by the northern boundary wall, 
And the monotone insect voice of night 
Try vainly the splendors of day to recall. 



38 



My sweetheart and I unwilling depart 
Through the crunching stubbles, and silence keep 
As we pass under trees whose leaves will start 
In the sudden tremors of first light sleep. 

The distinctions of hard-eyed day have passed 
As we enter our door, and pain and delight 
Of our day-thoughts have melted into the vast 
Harmonious tenderness of night. 



39 



The Gale 

The bees hang under the blossoms' lee, 

By bonds invisible anchored there ; 
Birds cling to yonder shuddering tree, 

All heading the same way ; 
The swallows wheel and scream with glee 

Mid apple-blossoms whirling gay ; 
Spindrift comes scudding over the sea 

Into your fluttering hair. 

In shattering blasts the billows hurl 

Their weight upon the staggering quay ; 
Sheet after sheet, burst, leap, and whirl 

The rainbow flames of spray. 
The shipping in the seething swirl 

Tosses and strains to break away, 
In roaring rigging sailors furl 

Slapping sails hurriedly. 

The crisp and hard-blue waters o'er, 

Like blushes on an eager girl. 
Cloud-shadows sail. The weltering, far 

Horizon jaggedly 
Grips the wild sky. Along the shore 

The gulls forever untiringly 
Now plunge, flash up, now calmly soar 

Where white the breakers curl. 



40 



O my beloved, cannot -we 

Amid the passionate uproar 
On storm-steep paths of liberty 

One care-free journey fare ? 
Can we not one sun's course be free, 

Mid urge and surge of generous dare, 
On racing crests of life to be 

As billows, birds, and air? 
Can we not burst the gates of fear, 

Sweep off the bars and crumbling store 
And lees of yesterday's wisdom drear. 

And miser-prudency? 
Our thoughts without expedient veer, 

The falter in our voice no more, 
Our hearts no usurers, the sheer 

Storm-joy within the deep soul's core. 



41 



Day-After-Day 



O, drive once more from the beaten brain 
The grizzled horror of day-after-day ; 

O, clear from the smothered heart again 
The cumulant dregs of day-after-day. 

O, paint once more the flying goal 

With the rainbow-splendors of April storms ; 
O, match once more the pursuing soul 

With the racing clouds of April storms. 

O, wake my pulse with the old spring cry 
To the panting pace of the East-ridden sea ; 

O, fill again the shrunken eye 

With the blue-sea vision of Eternity. 

O, lift this monster of Now-and-Near, 
This incubus of monotonous wants ; 

The changeless face of the spying Here 
That stares in silence, stares and haunts. 



In October Woods 

All our striving is a fitful flicker 
Sun-flecked ground upon, 
That a cloud, a wayward migrant chanceling^ 
Whelms anon. 

Our compelling passions, starts of breezes, 
Swiftly come and past — 

Sea-song drifted through a door sprung open. 
Then made fast. 

And their fruits are sudden gusts of diamond 

Dewdrops mouldward bound : 

A few glints in midair, fugient patter 

On the ground. 

Shoals of red leaves floating on a troubled 
Pool, our gorgeous dreams ; 
And its banks are marred by roving cattle 
Of our schemes. 

And our will, self-destined, self -responsive, 
Linking deed with deed, 
Is a gossamer wind-waif, spanning haply 
Weed and weed. 

Shingly vistas of our high-roofed cities, 
Power and patience-wrought : 
Drifted leaves on ground, one season tramples. 
Into nought. 



43 



The Singer 

Give me your flowers, 
Your tears and applause ; 
Bid the dumb minutes 
For me pause. 

What passed twixt rose 
And the heart of June 
Has linked us awhile 
In magic of tune. 

Long in darkness 
I strove unknown, 
Back into darkness 
I glide alone. 

The rose on your bosom 
To-morrow is dead. 
Lost is the voice of 
The song that is sped. 

Only to-day I 
May dazzle and reign — 
Shower me with plaudits 
And roses again. 



44 



LofCX 



Song 



My love and I in the meadow lie, 
In the deep grass hidden so close, so close. 
Through whose shadow-sprays the low sun strays, 
And, passing, smiles, for he knows. 

And free to every sun-warm breeze. 
As the winnowed grass, is my soul, my soul, 
To the fragrant breeze, the vagrant breeze. 
Faint with sweet summer-dole. 

There's none to spy but the glimmering sky. 
And his lover's heart is so wide, so wide — 
Soon in godly mirth he will hold the Earth 
In his arms, a dark-tressed bride. 

A little bird, can he have heard 

What our trembling hearts have sighed, have 

sighed. 
His wooing song he has stilled so long — 
He knows, he knows, my bride . . . 

We know a place of crumpled grass 
Where we lay together so close, so close. 
Where memories stray, as of new-mown hay 
The fragrance — and no one knows. 



45 



Vibrations 

I have drunk the sunset potion 
Of that fiery western bowl, 
And the heart-beat of creation 
Goes a-humming through my soul. 

I am dancing with the grasses 
To the breeze's time-sweet tune ; 
Tremulous as the forest with the 
Rain-wind's reminiscent croon. 

With the homing bees a-droning 
To the calling bluebells' chime ; 
Pulsing with the insect-murmur 
Of the whirring wheel of time. 

With the fire-flies a-throbbing 
O'er a pine-walled daisy mead : 
Forest organ's Vox Humana, 
Giant-fluted, million- keyed. 

I am quivering with the ripples 
Tumbling diamonds on the shore, 
That they gleaned in careless wonder 
From the heavens' exhaustless store. 



46 



Rolling in the long slow eea-swells, 
Like that distant blur of light, 
With a cargo of sea-longing 
Gliding in the shoreless night. 

In a willess glad surrender 
Like a perfect violin, 
I respond to every tremor 
Of the magic voice within. 

Till I chime with each elusive 
Faint and fainter overtone 
Of the universal keynote, 
Haunting, echoing, still unknown. 



47 



Christmas Eve 

After the wonder of Christmas Eve 
'*^^,When I was a little boy, 
I took to bed in my jealous arms 
My most beloved toy. 

And visions of what we were going to do 
In the hermit world of my den, 

Went to sleep with my hot unwilling eyes, 
And waked with my dreams again. 

I am no longer a little lad, 

And toys have lost their charm ; 

Yet every night now is Christmas Eve, 
With its dearest gift in my arm. 



48 



Fall Exuberance 

When the wind through the brown 
Withered crowns hisses sharp, 
As the weaving waves in Winter 
With ice-jewels in their warp . . . 

When the sun roams again 

Through the breached Summer screen, 
And the stored lethargic shadows 
Scatters from the forest green . . . 

When the leaves on the wind 

Are as birds on the wing, 

And the silken milkweed bevies 
From a dell go wandering . . . 

Then my heart starts anew 

On the road o'er the hill, 

Autumn shriven, Autumn driven, 
Wholly given to Autumn's will. 



49 



Vapors 



On quivering hills a tender haze, 
Meek afterthought of fiercest blaze ; 
A pearly smile on field and stream, 
The wood-birds' answering pensive theme 
A vesper dream. . . . 

Shades of our strangled hopes, they rise, 
Like films on dream-enchanted eyes. 
On the ardent heart a numbing chill, 
And the paeans of imperious will 
Grow faint and still. 



60 



The Tree 

Each Spring-tide of new impulse rent 
The fibres, lesser passions wove ; 
Fluted with deepening scars, it strove 
Till the long urge of life was spent. 

When man the perfect shaft beheld. 
Who anguish for each triumph paid, 
Its image out of stone he made, 
Which his mute aspirations spelled. 



51 



The Turn of the Wheel 

A flash of reckless frenzy, and a glow 

Far prouder than the ever forespent joy 

Of fruitful thrift, and like a worn-out toy 

A golden hoard Fall scatters at a throw. 

But while the world lies hushed and drear, the slow, 

Sure Earth has fused it — nought but brown alloy 

To wolfish tempests leaving to destroy — 

Into another flower-crested flow. 

In vain we try to hoard the golden dowers 

Of love and thought the quickened moments gave, 

The heart must lavish in unstinted showers 

Its wealth to swell an ever new-born wave ; 

The greedy mind becomes a beggared knave 

As sullen 'hind its leering spies it cowers. 



62 



I Saw a Russian Thistle Ball 

I saw a Russian thistle ball. 

It sped on the course of the aimless winds, 

In the garish light of December plains, 

A nerveless, colorless, worthless thing, 

Like a fugitive shape of the pallid sands. 

An insolent vagrant, at every shift. 

It left the easy prolific germs 

Of a vulgar, surly, elbowing brood. 

And the dim cross-lights of memory fall 

On a hillside dewy with breath of spring, 

Where with tenacious fortitude, 

Arbutus wrests its thrifty terms 

From rocks that hold warm rays in bonds. 

From nursing moss and leafy drift. 

There its perennial home it finds, 

And all the sweets of earth it gathers in its veins. 



53 



Precious Stones I Found 
by the Sea 

Precious stones I found by the sea, 
Aglitter with magic of sun and spray; 
I took them home exultingly 
Were paltry pebbles, dry and gray. 

The vesper sun in the maple trees 
Fired the torches of rioting Fall ; 

1 bore a branch with a few faint leaves, 

Dusty and sere, to my somber wall. 

Songs were urgent in my breast, 

As the tide of Spring, as the swell of the sea 

Words obeyed my burning hest, 

Bare as stones from the sea. 



54 



